Page 2040 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 4 June 2019
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Rights Commission. In other words, at the very point in time when a growing chorus of rather important voices has been publicly and often quite passionately expressing the need for greater transparency in this space, the Labor-Greens government introduces an amendment that, at best, appears to signal its ongoing commitment to secrecy provisions that some have described as the most restrictive in the country.
For many of those who are clamouring for greater openness and transparency, including but not limited to the experts mentioned above, this feels more like a slap in the face than a technical amendment. What is needed right now is not a tightening up of restrictions on access to information covered by the Freedom of Information Act, especially if it is amendment without any practical impact.
Just a few weeks ago members of this Assembly unanimously supported my motion asking the Standing Committee on Health, Ageing and Community Services to inquire into the ability to share information in the care and protection system, with a view to providing the maximum transparency and accountability so as to restore and maintain community confidence in the ACT’s care and protection system. This discussion is clearly ongoing and, as the president of the Law Society recently noted, pushing ahead with amending the Freedom of Information Act today merely prejudices that discussion.
The Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this amendment as a clear signal that we have heard those who believe that the privacy provisions surrounding care and protection decisions in this territory are already too restrictive for the system to be healthy and to function in the way that it needs to.
Protecting privacy is one thing—we wholeheartedly support that—but secrecy provisions that to legal experts seem designed more to protect the system from scrutiny are something else altogether. Whilst the Canberra Liberals will not be supporting this part of the amendment bill, we do support efforts—some already underway—designed to review this matter and we recommend needed reforms.
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Disability, Minister for Children, Youth and Families, Minister for Employment and Workplace Safety, Minister for Government Services and Procurement, Minister for Urban Renewal) (11.49): I will briefly speak in response to Mrs Kikkert. To answer her question as to why we are doing this, one word is sufficient: transparency. What those advocates who go on and on about transparency are now trying to do is oppose an amendment which is entirely about increasing the transparency of the FOI Act, so that people, when they read the FOI Act, understand what information is available and what information is not available to them under the FOI Act because of the existing and currently operational provisions of the Children and Young People Act.
That is the answer to Mrs Kikkert’s question: what we are trying to do here is increase transparency for people who are reading the FOI Act so that they better understand what it is that they get. As is appropriate then, this amendment is a minor technical amendment. It fixes an anomaly in the drafting of the FOI Act, ensuring, as I said,
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